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View all search resultsThe Land Bank paradox: For profit or justice?
Masked as agrarian reform, the national Land Bank is quietly dispossessing the rural poor to serve corporate profit, and a rushed new bill is about to make it permanent.
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A signpost is seen in Pantai Melayu village on Rempang Island, Batam city, Riau Islands, announcing that the Batam Free Trade Zone Authority (BP Batam) has the rights to manage the land, reportedly to be used as a Sekolah Rakyat location, as seen on July 15, 2026. BP Batam's unilateral claim is strenuously challenged by villagers, who say they own the land. (JP/Fadli)
T
he House of Representatives has finally taken up a long-overdue agrarian reform bill, targeted for passage by Sept. 24. That ticking clock, however, leaves virtually no room for rigorous scrutiny or genuine public participation.
Most concerning of all, the bill’s uneasy relationship with the national Land Bank remains entirely unexamined. Rushing legislation across the finish line risks cementing the very injustices it promises to resolve.
Lawmakers must confront an inescapable contradiction at the core of Indonesia’s land policy: the Land Bank itself. Established under the pro-business Job Creation Law, the agency claims to advance genuine agrarian reform, yet it formally caps land earmarked for redistribution at a meager 30 percent while systematically prioritizing commercial development.
If the new bill is to deliver real reform rather than lip service, it must dismantle this hollow charade.
When the Land Bank was conceived to manage state lands, it was greeted with considerable fanfare from policymakers and private investors alike. Strip away the rhetoric, however, and a troubling pattern emerges.
Far from delivering justice to marginalized farmers, the institution operates as a potent engine of dispossession, deepening social stratification under the veneer of reform. Indonesia must reckon with an uncomfortable reality: the Land Bank is inflaming our agrarian crisis, not resolving it.
Fundamentally, this crisis stems from a legal identity disorder. The 1960 Basic Agrarian Law takes its mandate directly from Article 33(3) of the Constitution: natural resources must be controlled by the state for the greatest prosperity of the people. Its mission is unapologetically redistributive, dismantling feudal holdings, righting historical wrongs and uplifting the rural poor.
